You can't spell "Snow" without "No"

Blog Post by: James Lileks

October 25, 2012 - 12:06 PM

Or "now," unfortunately. Augh. Snow. Forget everything I said about the pleasures of a dank gloomy October day. This is miserable. This is the first scrape of the raw blade of winter on your cheek, and that means snow, as well as overwriting. Not fond of this at all - especially if it persists, and Halloween means a shivering scurry from house to house in wet costumes. Was it two years ago we had a warm Halloween? It seemed as if it was almost 60 in the early evening, and the trees had most of their leaves. Something about this winter seems anxious to bear down and gather up the world. Still smarting from that confident spring, perhaps.

GEEK i09 found this: Denny’s is promoting Second Breakfast to promote the first of the 293 Hobbit movies coming out in the next 14 years. Their headline is a masterpiece of the passive, bland internet-speak: “The Hobbit’s Second Breakfast being served at Denny’s is something that is happening.” This is a longer version of “so this is a thing.” Anyway, here’s the ad:

Favorite part: “Build your own Hobbit Slam.” Oh, we’ll leave that to the film critics.

HISTORY The earliest blooper ever recorded - that’s the headline. But it’s more than that. It’s a video about the reconstruction of the first recorded musical performance, in 1878. They’’re tinfoil recordings, which were usually destroyed after a few plays.

Hunter said he was able to determine just this week that the man's voice on the museum's 1878 tinfoil recording is believed to be that of Thomas Mason, a St. Louis newspaper political writer who also went by the pen name I.X. Peck.

The internet is silent on Mr. Mason. His voice has survived beyond his work, apparently. Here it is:

HEROES The next James Bond might be Idris Elba. Perhaps you remember him from “The Wire,” or other fine performances. But, you say, James Bond is a Scotsman, and Elba is Black. Well, half Scot; his mother was Swiss. Does the character’s ethnicity matter, at this point? Is there something inherently Scottish about Bond anymore since we’ve passed beyond the Connery model, or is this is like making Shaft an Italian?

Ian Fleming had his own model for Bond:

Hoagy Carmichael. Really. But he wanted Bond to be “a blunt instrument,” a civil servant who had no particular charisma, and killed people on behalf of the Queen.

Hoagy looks up to the job in that picture.

INTERNET Yesterday we had handwritten emails; today it’s forms you can print out and give to someone with whom you have a grievance, or romantic interests. They’re from The Bureau of Communication. Here’s a portion of the form:

The narrative was, perhaps, just a little too good to be true. When news broke last month of the so-called "buddha from space" – a swastika-emblazoned statue, apparently 1,000 years old, that had been carved out of a meteorite and looted by a Nazi ethnologist – the world was enthralled.

There were only, it turns out, a few slight catches. According to two experts who have since given their verdict on the mysterious Iron Man, it may have been a European counterfeit; it was probably made at some point in the 20th century; and it may well not have been looted by the Nazis. The bit about the meteorite, though, still stands.